'Miracle on Main Street' performance today

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Donna Christopher Staff Writer

Published
1:00 am EST, Tuesday, December 23, 2008

BETHEL -- About 50 children will perform "Miracle on Main Street," with an engaging script and an energetic blend of songs and traditional carols, Wednesday at two Christmas Eve family services at Walnut Hill Community Church in Bethel.

The services are at 3 and 5 p.m.

Six children with speaking parts and a choir directed by
Amy Miele
form the cast of this "pageant within a pageant" by Celeste Clydesdale.

The story, played out in a dress rehearsal Tuesday, is about a group of kids who want to celebrate Christmas by performing the Nativity pageant in public, on Main Street in the town where they live. However, they face opposition from the mayor, who deems the material not "hip or happening enough."

The youngsters go door-to-door to persuade residents to write letters that will change the mayor's mind. It seems futile at first, because the kids think nobody's listening. Then they meet a "sweet and helpful" woman, who it turns out, is the mayor's sister. She offers to use her "in" with the mayor's office to help them.

Many of the other people the children called on did write to the mayor. She tells the kids her phone has been 'ringing off the hook. You even called my sister!'

The final scene, a live Nativity, shows the mayor and her sister in the front row of the townsfolk in attendance.

For the scene, the choir sings "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" and "Joy to the World," among the hymns, and readers tell the story of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.

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Walnut Hill Community Church is at 156 Walnut Hill Road in Bethel. All are welcome at the performances. For more information, call the church at (203) 796-7373.